Here we see a nervous little soot sprite sidling up to the Chibi Totoro - perhaps to whisper a secret in his big ears.

The sootsprite is roughly 1 inch tall (although it's hard to tell through all that fluff...) and the Chibi Totoro is about 5 1/2 inches tall including its ears.

These cute little guys are part of a set that was commissioned for Christmas; when the commissioner asked me to make a set of needlefelt plushes based on Hayao Miyazaki's film "My Neighbor Totoro" I was quite elated! I had been wanting to make Totoros for quite a while, and this was the perfect excuse.

(The alternate title of this piece would be: "The Endless Tribulations Surrounding Photographing Two Characters With Disparate Values In A Basement Without A Tripod Or Proper Light Equipment.")

Totoros and Sootsprites are © Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli